Fishermen Pluck Depth Charge From Water

March 07, 1989|By CHARLES H. BOGINO Staff Writer

HAMPTON — A rusty depth charge containing 300 lbs. of TNT that fishermen plucked from the water Saturday afternoon is in the hands of Navy officials at the Yorktown Naval Weapons station, a Navy spokesman said Monday.

The unidentified fishermen left the 55-gallon drum on a Wanchese Fish Co. dock on Water Street in Phoebus at around 3 p.m., said Naval weapons station spokesman J.T. Black.

Capt. Ronald Doran, the explosives technician for the Hampton Police Department, said the charge could not have fired because the triggering mechanism was missing.

"As I understand the story, it got caught in their net and they just dumped it on the dock and went back out," Black said of the fishermen who deposited the depth charge. "I guess they didn't want it on their boat."

He said the explosives ordnance detachment at the weapons station will dispose of the object. He did not know the exact age of the depth charge, but speculated that it is World War II vintage.

Doran said he went to the fish company at 28 Water St. to investigate a call that a suspicious-looking drum had been left on the company dock. When he arrived, he found that dock workers had rolled the drum out to the parking lot.

Sam Daniels, one of the owners of the fish company, said though workers suspected the object was a depth charge, he told them to move it because it was blocking the dock. "Somebody had to move it to get it here, so I figured it would be OK to move it one more time."

The workers at the company had no idea who left the drum there nor where in the water it had been found, Dorn said. "It was rusted through on one side. You could reach in and flake off the TNT."

Doran called in the weapons station experts, who picked up the device about an hour later.

Depth charges are designed to explode under water, creating shock waves that cause submarines to collapse. Doran said the amount of explosive in the depth charge that was found would be potentially harmful at a distance up to 3,000 feet.

He added, however, that the lack of the firing mechanism coupled with the effect of the salt water on the TNT rendered the device less dangerous.

If the explosive has not been too heavily damaged by the water, technicians at the weapons station may remove the TNT from the depth charge by using steam, Black said. Otherwise they simply will dispose of it by blowing it up, he said.

Black said that the incidence of discovery of unexploded ordnance happens "a couple times a year, maybe." Most often what is found are practice devices that simulate a weapon but have no explosive in them, he said.